When an issue is reported with an application, an early debugging step is to reproduce the problem. Because our platform is an API, and developers use it for many different kinds of applications, TokBox employees used to have to reproduce problems by building a new application for each new use case. After doing that a couple of times, we wizened up and started using pre-built sample applications as the starting point. This still meant that any functionality that wasn’t generic needed to be added in. What we really needed was an application that used a myriad of features we offered: Enter the TokBox Live Debugger.

The Live Debugger is meant to provide access to TokBox’s API with an easy-to-use interface. We’ve used it internally for a couple of years now and love it so much that we can’t help but share it with the world.

The two main uses of the Live Debugger are to reproduce issues reported in the field, and to join in on a live Session that is experiencing a problem. You can achieve these, respectively, by creating a new Session ID right from the Live Debugger or by entering in a user’s existing Session ID. From there you can view the number of connections, streams, and various properties associated with them.

But debugging your existing app is just the start. You can use the Live Debugger to answer those burning qualitative questions about your application even before implementing. What is the quality of the user’s experience when ten users are publishing simultaneously on a Mac Mini on Firefox? How about if half of them had a restricted frame-rate? You don’t need to write a single line of code to find out. All you need us the Live Debugger and a colleague.

Check out our demo video for a detailed walk through. If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, let us know in the forums.